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I found Adrian in a coffee shop sitting at a small table pounding away at some sort of text: belmngape...aamappee...brkpee...mchhhhh...mrychgmeechgmee. Everyone else in the room had notebooks and laptops, but not Adrian. He had lugged the old Royal typewriter out of the English Department Writing Museum and must have hitched a ride on a truck to this current location, which was fifteen miles away from the university.
He was naked (again) but that didn't seem to bother anyone in the cafe. By now many had heard of him and he developed a kind of celebrity status around Hayward, Newark and Fremont. He was so hairy now that nearly everyone accepted him more as an ape than a man. As he walked into a cafe people would glance up over the lips of their coffee cups and commence a chorus of whispers. He had lost his ability to speak but he could point at favorite drinks and pastries which cafe owners would give him for free in exchange for an autograph---a primitive X on a printed photo. He used a stir-stick as a pen and expresso as his ink. His image would often be framed and posted next to those of Joe Montana, John Kennedy, Billy Holiday and Lady Gaga.
And this is how I found him, sitting among his fans.
"Adrian, good to see you!" I said. He didn't seem at all upset that I was there; he knew what it meant: we were going back to the university English Department. He looked at me, grinned and nodded. Today's episode must have fatigued him. Without resistance and looking resolved, he got into the old Ford pickup with me. I realized I was no longer the aging university professor who had found a late-profession final project, or a pestering parent, but a protector and friend. We took a wordless drive back to the department and I escorted him to his room. "So glad you're back" I offered. He seemed too tired to respond. He stretched out on his cot and slept, and as I left I noticed a woman's patent leather purse with big brass fittings on it, slung over the edge of the couch. I wondered where it came from. Adrian slept for the twelve hours. [[Introducing Adrian]] [[Sighting Report: The Second Visit]]
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First Encounter Jobless.
It was a Friday, and Warren Hall was empty of students. I was grading papers and waiting for a meeting with the dean and a few of my colleagues. You could hear an echo on a day like today. It was then I heard his footsteps and a few taps on my office door. He was about sixty years of age with graying hair and wore old fashioned metal rimmed glasses. He was about five feet ten inches and wore an old sports jacket that showed threads around the cuffs. He was pleasant: "Hi," he said. "May I come in?" "Sure please do," I replied. "I could use some company."
"I'm Adrian Vasquez-Hutchinson, and I've been teaching English part-time at High Canyon College for about ten years. Through no fault of my own, I was just laid off and I'm about to lose my health care; I'm very dependent on it. I have a great CV and recommendations but I'm running out of time. Look," he said, unbuttoning and then pulling up his sleeve. This revealed a very hairy arm with with brown blotches under the hair. "I think I'm really going to need medical care for this very soon."
"What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said. "In fact, no one else seems to know what this is either. It took me years to get some medical people to even look at it and now that they're looking at it I can't see them anymore. You see my dilemma. One good thing: They eliminated cancer as a diagnosis."
"Thank God for small favors," I replied clumsily. "I'm very sorry to hear about this problem, but we're having budget cuts too, and one of my my old college friends just called and said Santa Clara was laying off a few English teachers too, and he was very nervous about his prospects."
"I was afraid of that," he replied.
"Well, let's not assume the worst. Call me---I've got to run.Look," I said. "Just give me your CV or resume and I'll run it by the dean, Valerie Rutherford. She may see something; she knows a lot of people around here and may possibly find a lead. Call me in about a week."
"OK. Thanks or your time," he said. and then I could have sworn he said---but it couldn't have been, "I think I'm becoming an ape." No, it couldn't have been, but that's what I thought I heard. He left then and I walked to the stairwell. As I approached the dean's office on the fifth floor, each step in the stairwell seemed to say "becoming an ape...becoming an ape." Yes, that's what I heard; it wasn't imagined.
When the staff meeting broke up for a bathroom break, I went to the copy machines to make reproductions of Adrian's CV. I handed it out to other staff members but gthye didn't seem too hopeful.
Later, I called Adrian and left a message that I would continue to circulate the resume and encouraged him to continue his search.
Becoming an ape.
[[Sighting Report: Adrian at City Hall]]
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It was a cold day, but it didn't seem to be windy until I reached the rooftop of the Newark City Hall where a Channel 7 news helicopter had spotted Adrian sitting among the antennas at the edge of the roof. His legs dangled over the side. I arrived just before the police learned about the situation, and Adrian was watching them from above as though he were insects.
I picked up the megaphone from the cargo bed of my truck---the one I used for demonstrations and science rallies, proceeded to City Hall and found a roof access stairway. When I arrived on the roof, Adrian's thick hair was waving in the blustering wind, and he was trembling. I called his name and he didn't respond, fixating on the crowd gathering before him. City workers were coming out to see him, as were local school children on their way home from classes. He was the picture of loneliness at the top of the building--like a gargoyle surveying a city from a cathedral. At that monent, he was a foreigner and an oddity to human society, sitting in a bitter, alien wind. While he had grown extremely strong, it was possible that a violent, icy-cold wind gust could throw him off the building with one powerful blow. I tried to get his attention by starting a conversation. I called his name, but he didn't respond, continuing to stare at the crown below him. He then looked up at the Diablos in the distance, as flat icy-white clouds streamed passed them. He seemed to be looking for something. The mountains, cold and distant, were just like the humanity around him.
"Adrian," I said. "It's time to come home. Marietta Gonzalez was asking for you today. She says you've become an escape arrist. She made some lumpia for you. They're thick, soft and ---well, very different---filled with vegetables instead of meat. She knows you don't like meat. Let's go back and try some; she'd really like to see you. What do you say---can we leave?"
He stood up, and I'd immediately thought I'd fixed the problem, Instead, he ambled slowly and sadly over to a big, unconnected air conditioner that had been left on the rooftop. It was enormous, yet he managed to push it against the door of the roof hatch. It became clear to me that he wanted to block the access to any possible roof-top visitors. The heavy block of metal machinery would hold rhe hatch doors, at least for a while. He returned to the edge and looked down again. The news helicopter circled around the building but I was unable to distinguish who was inside---probably a camera crew and a TV narrator. The chopper rose and fell as heavy gusts of wind blew of the Bay; and then it left. I sat down on an air vent not far from him. I didn't want to get too close to the edge; I have a fear of heights. "Adrian, we have to leave," I said. "It's getting colder. You ned to eat." His eyes were distant. He seemed held more by loneliness against the very cold air.
Then I heard the sound of another helicopter. It approached the building from the north. As it drew closer, I made out the colors: black, white and gold. It was smaller and lighter than the news chopper. The lettering on the side spelled out Hayward Police Department. "Looks like you have another guest," I quipped. The copter rose above us, passed over and desended to the other side of the roof. As my eyes followed it, I looked away from Adrian, but when I looked back, Adrian was gone. I heard the cries of people wathich from the sidewalks, but I was too fearful to approach the ledge. I ran to the roof hatch, which was blocked by the air conditioning unit. I couldn't budge it, and called the police for assistance. They said the copter would ascend and then hover over me for a rescue attempt.
In the meantime, Adrian had scaled down the side of the city hall, rose over some hedges, descended under a railroad bridge and disappeared.
I needed to get off the roof. Later the chopper descended to about forty feet above me. A man in a harness dropped down toward me, swaying in the wind. I can't remember anything else. I awoke in a Hayward hospital, with Fred Michaels, the anthropologist, standing over me.
[[Introducing Adrian]]
[[Sighting Report: The Second Visit]]
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I heard nothing from Adrian for about four months, and hoped he had solved his problem, gotten a new job and moved on with his life. I was sadly mistaken. He showed up at my office threshold in the fall quarter in November, his glasses blurry with scratch marks. He removed a flat cap from his head and I saw tufts of fluffy red hair on his formerly balding pate. The little problem he had described earlier was now overwhelming him. As he predicted earlier, he was becoming an ape. He was stressed and miserable, his speech slurred. He seem pained. Clearly he needed help. His condition was emergent. I was stunned and asked him to sit down, telling him I'd be back in a minute. I hurried down the hall to get my friend, Fred Michaels, an anthropologist, to join me; this was too important to face alone. Luckily, Fred was in his office and and I managed to coax him to mine. Like me, he was thinking about retiring soon. We collected in my office where Adrian waited, and there we were: three aging males.
"Adrian," I said. "This is Fred from Anthropology. I thought he should hear your story too. The two of us will listen, and maybe we can help you."
"Thank you," he replied.
"So what's going on" I asked, and Adrian slowly, in slurred, pained speech, he began to tell us his story. Blotches on his skin, tufts of hair and the agonized look on his face tesified to a creature---I really couldn't call him a man---in agony. He described seeing a pimple on his left forearm, with a lot of unusual hair around it. It became itchy and he scratched it. The head came off, exposing a pore with a white speck of fat in it. He squeezed it and the fat deposit oozed out. But he quickly realized the narrow white tube wasn't fat at all but a worm of some sort. He picked it up with some tissue, examined it and threw it in the toilet, flushing it out of his life---but he remained in shock all the same. He believed this was the seminal event in subsequent problems. He said he had been going through some male pattern baldness, sleep deprivation, dizziness when he stood up and erectile dysfunction---typical "old man" problems. But there were other issues not so typical. He had been gay most of his life, and his younger lover was disturbed by all the changes he saw in Adrian's body and left him suddenly and with very little warning. This was devastating to Adrian. They had talked about marrying as soon as the laws permitted it. After that, Adrian was told by the dean at High Canyon College that he couldn't be rehired in the spring due to budget cuts and enrollment decline. This meant he would lose his health care and the prospect of medical treatment---that's what brought him to Cal State de Bahia, where he hoped he might get at least a part-time job and medical coverage. Failing that, he would at least get an informed listener, and maybe some beneficial visibility.
Something else: his long interest in same-sex relationships was waning. He caught himself looking at women differently, and his new appreciation might have been the cause of his recent love-loss.
"Can you help me?" he asked. Fred and I looked at each other, and I replied to Adrian that we felt compassion for his condition and we needed to talk about it. I tried to be positive. Fred said that his situation was compelling; he couldn't see how science could possibly ignore it. We asked Adrian to come back in a few hours. I had twenty dollars left on a Peet's Coffee card and gave it to him, suggesting he use it for breakfast. Looking down on it, Adrian seemed disappointed. "Look," I said, trying to encourage him. "You're case is really unique; bureaucracies don't move easily and we need a strategy."
"Oh, I see," he responded. "Okay, I'll be back in a few hours. Eleven so?"
"Fine."
"Fine."
[[Sighting Report: Adrian at City Hall]]
[[Sighting Report: Adrian at a Cafe]]Double-click this passage to edit it.At least two people saw it. Fortunately Marietta didn't. She was working at her counter and talking sweetly, almost like baby-talk to Adrian. She was half Filipna and half Mexican and very alluring. She was "affecting" Adrian in a sexual way. His head was over her counter, and she kept smiling. She seemed to really like him: "How are you today?" she asked. "Want a cookie?" Adrian smiled and took it from her.
As Beth Jackson was coming out of her office, she saw what was going on and was startled. She went back into her office and pulled out a plant-watering spray can and sprayed Adrian's face, wiping it with a paper towel and cooling him off; he seemed to like it and his problem subsided. Beth saw me later and recommended I get a loin-cloth for Adrian. I found a decorative rope and cut a strip from an old sarape and covered his crotch with it. He seemed proud of it. He was no longer exposed. We thought it was best to minimize problems that might harm his status as a subject of study.
[[Sighting Report: Adrian at City Hall]]
[[Sighting Report: Adrian at a Cafe]]Fred and I had a discussion about Adrian. It was clear to us that something was going on with him physically. "Did you see his lower lip?" Fred asked. "Yeah," I replied. "It's growing purple, and when he smiled, it practically curled up."
"And that hair!" said Fred. "My God! This guy's walking around living with this! He's probably talking a lot of gaff from BART riders and K-Mart shoppers."
"K-Mart? Is that place still open?"
"You know what I mean. The whole area's a shopper's paradise. When he has to go out, people must be talking."
"So what do we do?"
"Are you kidding? This is the discovery of a lifetime! If we could form a committee, there's a wealth of possible care we cjuld give him. I'll bet we could get grant money for a study. I can see it coming. We could involve Stanford, Berkeley and UCSF. Careers could be made."
"Hold on," I said. "We're old. Let's forget the career stuff and think about a man who's having to carry this burden day-in and day-out."
"We'd better meet with Valerie Rutherford. She HAS to know about this right away."
"Agree. And then we meet with Ema Gomez."
"Yes, absolutely."
XXXXXXX TO BE CONTINUED